Place names in Spanish in Galicia, Hispanophobia, and trash journalism

Ridiculous controversies reappear every so often in some media outlets, especially during the month of August.

The Popular Party and toponymy in Galicia: a new twist on the nonsense
The separatists lie: Galicia's toponyms in Spanish are not illegal

August is the quintessential holiday month in Spain, and any nonsense becomes news. Let's look at an example. A few days ago, the far-left pamphlet Público stated: "Esperanza Aguirre defends that Sanxenxo is called "Sangenjo" like in Madrid and infuriates the Galicians." To begin with, I don't understand where the problem lies. What Aguirre said is the same as what the Royal Spanish Academy points out: "In official texts generated by the Administration, it is mandatory to use the vernacular name "Sanxenxo". Outside of these uses, it is recommended to use the traditional form "Sangenjo" when speaking or writing in Spanish".

On the other hand, Aguirre has not infuriated "the Galicians", but rather some nationalists who are offended by reading "Sangenjo", a Spanish toponym used for centuries in Galicia, a region of Spain where Spanish has been spoken since the Middle Ages, although some intolerant people are offended by reading it. In fact, many of us Galicians continue to use the Spanish toponyms of our land, something that provokes fits of rage among some lunatics who are offended by reading toponyms in Spanish. In Galicia, many of us assume that our land has two official languages, and that's why it's normal for place names to exist in both languages.

I think it's time to be clear: whatever your voting choice, someone who gets angry about reading the place name "Sanxenjo" is an intolerant nationalist, someone who doesn't accept for their land something that is normal in any territory with two languages: the existence of two different ways of naming the same place. The capital of Finland is "Helsinki" in Finnish and "Helsingfors" in Swedish, the two official languages of that country, and I don't see any stupid controversies about it or Finnish nationalists saying that those who say "Helsingfors" are not true Finns or deserve to be ridiculed.

Those who get angry when they read "Sangenjo" or "La Coruña" are the same kind of intolerant nationalists as those who thought that speaking Galician or Catalan made you a bad Spaniard. The difference is that this way of thinking, very common among people who despised democracy, is now imitated by people who call themselves democrats but cannot tolerate the fact that a bilingual region has place names in two languages, when this should be the norm in a democracy.

Finally, I wonder what those intolerant nationalists will do when they go on a tourist trip and tell us where they've been, because the experience can be truly curious. Will they tell their friends how much they liked the city of "München" or "Minga," in case Germans or Bavarians get offended by the word "Munich"? Will they say they were in "Warszawa" if they traveled to the capital of Poland, for fear of angering the Poles? Will they claim they really liked "Hrvatska" in case some Croats get offended by the word "Croatia"?

Of course, the answer to all these questions is no. The only language that seems to bother some people is Spanish and the place names written in it. We are not only facing a problem of nationalist intolerance, but also a very specific expression of that intolerance: Hispanophobia, that is, hatred of all things Spanish, something that is irrational whoever promotes it, but which in the case of Spaniards is also purely ridiculous. In fact, in Catalonia there are official signs that say "La Corunya" instead of "A Coruña" and no Hispanophobic nationalist protests about it.

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Image: Instituto Geográfico Nacional. Map of Galicia from 1849 with the place name "Sanjenjo" and other Spanish place names that have been excluded from official toponymy simply because they are in Spanish.